Should Hreflang x-default be on every page of every country for an International company?
-
UPDATED 4/29/2019 4:33 PM
- I had made to many copy and pastes. Product pages are corrected
Upon researching the hreflang x-default tag, I am getting some muddy results for implementation on an international company site older results say just homepage or the country selector but….
My Question/Direction going forward for the International Site I am working on: I believe I can to put x-default all the pages of every country and point it to the default language page for areas that are not covered with our current sites. Is this correct?
From my internet reading, the x-default on every page is not truly necessary for Google but it will be valid implemented.
My current site setup example:
https://www.bluewidgets.com Redirects to https://www.bluewidgets.com/us/en (functions as US/Global)Example Countries w/ code Site:- 4 countries/directories US/Global, France, Spain
Would the code sample below be correct?
-
https://www.bluewidgets.com/us/en/ (functions as US/Global)
-
US/Global Country Homepage - https://www.bluewidgets.com/us/en/
-
US/Global Country Product Page(s) This would be for all products - https://www.bluewidgets.com/us/en/whizzer-5001/
-
http://www.bluewidgets.com/us/en (functions for France)
-
France Country Homepage - https://www.bluewidgets.com/fr/fr/
-
France Country Product Page(s) This would be for all products- https://www.bluewidgets.com/es/es/whizzer-5001
-
http://www.bluewidgets.com/us/en (functions as Spain)
-
Spain Country Homepage - https://www.bluewidgets.com/es/es/
-
Spain Country Product Page(s) This would be for all products - https://www.bluewidgets.com/es/es/whizzer-5001
Thanks for the spot check
- Gravy
-
Yes, your understanding of x-default is correct. The purpose of including it everywhere you have alternate HREFLANG links, is to handle any locales you don't explicitly include (to tell the search engine which is the default version of the page for other non-specified locales). And it should be included on each version of the page, along with the other specified alternate links for each locale. Alternatively, you could collect all of these centrally into the sitemap file, rather than inserting into each page. Both types of implementation are valid (but anecdotally I've had better luck with on-page tags instead of sitemap implementation).
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
International SEO Two Subdomains Showing Up in Google Search Results
Hi I have a client that is having two subdomains showing up SERP when you Google their name. Here are the details. They have two subdomains us.companyname.com and en.companyname.com us.companyname.com is for the US and has completely different products and content than en.companyname.com en.companyname.com is the site designed for Europe and it is in English. How can I make it so that only the us. version shows up in the search results? Thanks in advance!
International SEO | | JohnWeb120 -
For My International Sites only Homepage in other Language rest Pages are in English. Hreflang required here?
Hello All, For my ecommerce site at my homepage there is an Language option of 9 different countries. My main site - abcd.co.uk and other sites are like this se.abcd.co.uk, fr.abcd.co.uk, es.abcd.co.uk etc From my main site if user clicks on fr.abcd.co.uk then France site will open but when he click on any link it will redirect to my UK site. On France site homepage if user hover the cursor then links are visible of UK site only. My query is ;- Do it required here to implement hreflang? As only homepage is in different language? Do it anything wrong in google point of view? Thanks!
International SEO | | wright3350 -
Hreflang no return tags error in GWT
Hello everybody, It has been 2 month since I'm trying to figure out the cause of increasing "no return tags" error count in GWT. I have checked the syntax several times and even switched from meta tags method to including language versions in sitemap without any luck. Below is a screen shot of GWT error and a sitemap excerpt that shows original and alternate URL both having return tags pointing to each other. The full sitemap can be found here: http://wordsru.com/sitemap.xml Any help or insight about whats going on here much appreciated. Thanks! RKP6AhZ.jpg KFluNCC.jpg
International SEO | | Icemax0 -
Should I be deindexing pages with thin or weak content?
If I have pages that rank product categories by alphabetical order should I deindex those pages? Keeping in mind the pages do not have any content apart from product titles? For example: www.url.com/albums/a/ www.url.com/albums/b/ If I deindexed these pages would I lose any authority passed through internal linking?
International SEO | | Jonathan_Hatton0 -
Targeting an Specific Country Audience - Domain Q
Hiya everyone! I know this might entail a novice SEO question, but i am having some doubts. Hope you can give your opinions. Its kind of technical question regarding domain and country targeting. I have a Steel Construction company targeting only the audience of the particular country. Last year, i bought the targeted domains for my brand (company name), as in domain.country specific TLD, Should i use these domains, redirect them, or something? Would that help?. I currently use domain.com, but i am constantly being beaten down by websites with domain specific with overly thin content, no PA or DA, and 0 links to their site. Should i use my country specific domains, would that make a difference? Note: I also run some marketing campaigns for charitable foundation i started, and i used country specific domain and server, and with little effort i ranked top 3 in most of the desired terms. Any help or comment is appreciated, Thanks!
International SEO | | JesusD0 -
Are my translated pages damaging my ranking?
Hi there, I have a site in English but with duplicates in different languages. The first problem is that these translated versions of my site receive no ranking on google stars (while the english does) - why is this? The second problem is that SEOmoz counts the errors on my site and then duplicates this error count for all the translated versions of my site - meaning I have a huge amount of errors (too many on-page links). Add this to the fact that I use affilite ID´s to track different types of traffic to my site - so all page urls in english and other languages, with an affiliate id on the end of the url, count as an error. This means I have a huge amount of on page errors indicated by SEOmoz, plus no ranking for my translated pages - I think this is really harming my overall ranking and site trust. What are your opinions on this?
International SEO | | sparkit0 -
SEO for different English spiking countries
Hi, I'm trying to target my SEO to several English spiking countries (Canada, UK, Australia, South Africa and so..) and I came across a big dilemma: should I tray to build a local version of my website for each country, or perhaps I should stay with my one .COM website and re-direct all the English-local-countries with 301 (if anyone will tray to go into the local domain)? The thing is that obviously the best practice to get high ranking is to be local, but what should I put in those sites and who can I avoid duplicate content and user confusion? On the other hand, do you think I can really get high ranking with one website for all those countries, and how? Thanks, Itay Drory.
International SEO | | RAN_SEO0 -
Targeting Different Countries... One Site or Separate?
I have a client who has 3 ecommerce sites. They are somewhat differentiated but for the most part sell the same stuff. Luckily 2 of them are quite authoritative, old and rank reasonably well. Most of the visitors and sales come from the US. He wants to start targeting Europe, Mexico and Canada. What are your suggestions for doing this? Are we better targeting on the main domains? Not really sure how to do that? Should we use a subdomain and a new store front for each geo? Should we use a .co.uk .co.mx and .co.ca each with a unique storefront? It looks like we are moving to a Magento platform so setting up multiple storefronts on a single database is not a big issue. Anyone have any experience with this?
International SEO | | BlinkWeb0